


Your Freudian Slip

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: Phandom Big Bang 2017 Fics [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Homeless Dan Howell, Homophobia, Hurt Phil Lester, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Parent Phil Lester, Past Rape/Non-con, Phil Lester Has Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Trans Phil Lester, Transphobia, lots and lots of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-01-29 11:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12630222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “Why the fountain?”“I don’t know. I guess I needed to feel something.”“You feel a lot of things.”“Not this, on most days. Not clean.”Trans!ftm!Phil Lester is trying to start a new life at university away from his abuser, but the grip of his past seems impossible to erase. Though his best friend from online, Dan Howell, saves him from his thoughts by showing up on his doorstep one New Year's Eve, nothing is at it seems on the surface. Thrust together at the darkest time of their lives, Dan and Phil have yet to trust one another with their secrets. Then an accidental kiss, a crisis of sexuality and a subpoena for a court appearance all begin to unravel the web of pretense.





	1. Your Freudian Slip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nayani Narayan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nayani+Narayan).



> This fic was completed in a stroke of pure inspiration thanks to the tireless encouragement and thorough editing of my amazing beta, [Bee](http://dont-tell-them-i-write-phan.tumblr.com), and my fic artist, [Charlie](http://partlycharlie.tumblr.com) (whose flawless artwork can be found directly below!). I am eternally grateful to you both for your endless fountain of ideas and for your profound understanding of the message and aesthetic I was trying to achieve with this story.  
> The trailer I made for this fic can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3tWC1UVVIw), and the playlist edit I made is [here](http://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/167613524368/before-we-get-too-old-a-dan-phil-playlist-for).

When the sun goes down, Phil begins to wish a little less that he could die.

When the sun goes down, the little green _Call_ button lights up in the corner of his screen, and he clicks on it and his view is flooded with the warmest eyes and the brightest smile and the most honest laugh that he has ever known. The crackly voice of the boy on the other end of the line fills him with imagined memories of clasped hands and secret kisses, and a trembling feeling of home.

When the sun goes down, Phil can forget who he was or even who he is. He simply thinks who he wants to be--with the one person he wants to be with.

Dan has no idea, really, just how much he means to Phil, the blue-eyed boy who hides his face behind his fringe and guards his visage into a neutral expression. Phil knows that Dan doesn’t know, and he plans to keep it like that. That way, he cannot feel so hurt when Dan speaks the way he does on this September night.

“Thalia called, apparently,” Dan says over their Skype call.

Phil picks an imaginary thread of lint from his bedspread. “Oh?”

“Yeah. My mum picked up.”

“That must have been awkward.”

“I mean, my parents didn’t know up until today that we weren’t a thing anymore.”

“You’re serious? Damn.”

“Yeah, well, my mum had a good talk with me about ‘not throwing away things that aren’t broken.’ As if that’s even an apt comparison. But anyway, she and my dad were less than thrilled to hear about it.”

“Kind of confusing for parents who want you to focus on law,” Phil says wryly.

Dan shrugs. “It’s like they panic when I’m single. Almost as if I’m…” He appears to swallow. “Well. Maybe they think I’m going to grow old alone and die in a house fire because I don’t know how to cook instant noodles.”

“I’m actually offended on your behalf. You do in fact know how to cook a proper cup of noodles. The crispy kind.”

“Shut up!” Dan lobs a pixelated mass of blue at the screen as Phil giggles uproariously.

“Well, so what did Thalia want, anyway?”

“Ah, she wanted to clarify if I was still going to her birthday party. She invited me before we called it quits, remember?”

“So, are you?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I thought you were on friendly speaking terms.”

Dan arches a brow at the screen with a dry smile. “Apparently not to her. She called the landline instead of texting me.”

“So why aren’t you going, if you’re okay with speaking to her?”

“Phil Lester, are you actually trying to sales-talk me into attending a social event?”

“No!” _Far from that_ , Phil almost adds. “I’m just curious.”

“I don’t know, really… I feel like there are too many of our mutual acquaintances there, and kids of the friends of my parents, and I don’t want our breakup to be a big deal. But I also don’t want to have to pretend to be back together with her. Besides, it’s unlikely that she _won’t_ read too much into it if I show up there.”

“And if you don’t…?” Phil prompts him.

“They’ll definitely know we’re not together. And I don’t know, I just…” Dan’s breath shudders against the camera. “There’s too many rumors going around.”

Phil watches patiently as Dan toys with his empty coffee mug, and he tries to discern what is knitting the boy’s brows together. When Dan doesn’t respond for another half minute, Phil coughs into his fist. “Rumors?”

Phil might be mistaken, but he could have sworn Dan swiped at his left eye. “You know. About me and...girls.”

“It’s okay to like girls or not to like them.”

“I know. But that’s not something I expect them to understand. Even if my breakup with Thalia didn’t even have anything to do with all that--I don’t know anymore. You know how people can get.”

“You have to stop caring about what they think, Dan,” Phil says gently. “As hard as it may sound, that’s what’ll keep you sane.”

Dan replies with a silent, wobbly smile.

“So do you still like them? ...Girls, I mean.”

“Y-yes,” Dan says haltingly, and his tone comes out all wrong, as if he meant to say something else, or at least to say something more, but Phil is not so cruel as to push the subject. Or perhaps Phil is simply afraid to pose the question that both of them must know is coming next, because maybe Dan isn’t lying when he says he may still like women.

Phil hates that he has the power to make the tears spring to Dan’s eyes so easily. He flounders for a different topic. “So, Christmas break is coming up, finally. Have you talked to your parents yet about coming up here to see me?”

“...No.”

“Dan, you promised you would this week…”

“I know. And I actually really tried this time, okay? It’s just--I guess the right timing never came up--things haven’t really been all that smooth between me and them lately…”

“It’s okay, Dan. I believe you.”

A flicker of relief dances over Dan’s face. “I’ll try again tomorrow or the day after, I promise.”

“You don’t have to.”

“What?” The curve in Dan’s lips drops.

“I know how hard it is to bring this up with your parents… I mean, I guess I don’t get it, because my parents wouldn’t even mind one bit about me seeing a really close friend like you.”

“I really will try, though. You mean a lot to me.” When Phil is silent for a beat too long, Dan tacks on: “Are you angry at me?”

“What? No. Why would I be?”

“You just said I shouldn’t go talk to them anymore. I swear it’s not me who doesn’t want to come see you. I would give everything just to get on that train right now, I swear to God.”

Phil has to crack a smile at that. “That’s like the starting line to the ending scene of every rom-com movie ever.”

“Promise you’re not mad at me?”

“’Course I’m not mad at you. I could never be, to be honest.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of just let all your hopes down.”

Phil’s chest constricts just then at the utterly stricken expression filling his screen. Not just his own hopes, he knows deep down inside, but Dan’s as well. And he truly does believe Dan. Their very first dream, the both of them, ever since they started to have this connection online, was to meet each other in person.

“I’m still in Manchester for like two more years. There’s plenty of time. We’ll figure something out eventually, somehow,” Phil says gently. Anything to stop the younger boy’s eyes from glistening this way. If he could just touch those beads of moisture clinging to Dan’s eyelashes and kiss them away, he would. But it’s an unbidden thought--and a forbidden one--and what right does he have to think it, to speak it to himself, when Dan doesn’t even know the half of who Phil really is?

The thought of kissing his best friend remains in its mutilated form inside him, and he can taste its acridness on his tongue even as the Skype session draws to a close, and Phil wants to kick himself in the stomach for once again failing to find the courage to confide in Dan. It would hardly be fair for him to expect Dan to admit the possible truth about his sexuality, when Phil himself has so much yet to reveal.

They’re both cowards, cowards, cowards, and Phil sometimes curses himself for daring to dream of something more than a beautiful face behind a screen of pixels.

~

Dan never tells Phil he’s coming up. It’s a shock. To both of them.

One minute, Phil is sprawled across his unmade bed, hands behind his head as he counts the paint drips on his ceiling, and the next minute there’s the unholy chime of the doorbell.

Phil thinks he’s hallucinating, probably. It’s what happens sometimes when he goes so long sleepless and without his anxiety meds. He’s not even entirely sure if the mouse that rustles in the crack in the corner of his bedroom wall is really just one or actually two, and if it’s gray or brown or blue. 

Blue is nice. It’s the color of his bedspread, his favorite mug, the shirt he wore when he had his first kiss, the tie on his mother’s apron. It’s even the color of his eyes, sometimes.

But brown is different. Brown is good.

Even though the warmth of it is utterly unattainable through the gray he feels each day.

The doorbell chimes again, twice in a row this time.

“Coming!”

Phil stands too close to his own door and it nearly smacks him in the face when he goes to open it. He feels as though he’s been slapped anyway, when his brain finally pulls itself together to register the glossy chocolate hair and the sloped nose and almond eyes before him.

His first instinct is to zip his hoodie up higher over his chest. And his second is to yank Dan forward in a crushing hug, full of stale warmth and train station breath and the silent, choked-back _just in time_.

“I could actually fucking kill you right now,” Phil mumbles.

“Hello to you too.” A chuckle, one that rumbles from deep within the other boy and sends tingles through Phil’s body from where their skin touches behind the cotton. 

“You bastard. You absolute bastard.”

They’ve pulled apart, grinning like fools.

“Language, Philip.”

“How the hell? How’d you get here? And when?”

“New Year’s Eve surprise?” A beat and a half later, like a missed cue, the first streak of unsyncopated explosions blooms in the distance.

“This is like the best birthday present ever.”

“Your birthday? That’s not even until like a month from now, you spork.”

“Actually shut up.”

Phil could kiss him right now. _God_ , he really could. Dan’s flesh and blood before him, standing in the doorway just at arm’s length, skin radiating warmth and softness and...existence. It’s real. He grabs Dan again into another hug, a proper one this time, the kind where they sway on both feet and gently walk backwards into the foyer of his flat without releasing their grip on one another.

“Phil, are you actually crying?”

Phil shoves him back with a wet laugh. He knows Dan means the tease in the most self-deprecating way possible, because the younger boy’s eyes are subtly streaming too.

In answer, he says: “This is like a dream, a dream _in heaven_. Look, I’m actually shaking. I can’t believe your parents said yes.”

Dan’s visage darkens. It’s almost as if his features settle back into a marble state. “Oh...yeah...there’s--about that. There’s a lot to tell you.”

“Wait, why? Did they not say yes? Dan, did you sneak up here? Why would you even do--”

“I didn’t sneak up here,” Dan interrupts him. “Not exactly. But it’s a long story. I’m really tired, though. Can we sit down first?”

“Of course.”

Every bone in Phil is aching to demand to know what happened, but he has just enough self-restraint to force his feet into the kitchen and his hands to find mugs to make hot chocolate. 

Dan’s here, Dan’s here, his mind keeps chanting. He feels small, undeserving, for finally being able to relish the shadow of Dan’s dimple in his cheek, or the way his straightened shock of hair flops over his left eye--or how his lips move in that asymmetrical half-smile that he does when he’s trying to make fun of Phil but secretly agreeing with him.

“Drink up,” he says, handing the hot mug to Dan. He flops onto the couch next to him.

“I’m studying at Manchester now,” Dan blurts out.

Phil chokes on his own drink.

“I transferred to Manchester,” Dan clarifies. “I’ll probably be able to late register for classes as soon as Christmas break is over.”

“You...transferred.” Phil is having trouble registering the news.

“Yes, I...wait. Are you _not_ happy that I’m in Manchester now?”

“No! No, it’s not, I mean, I’m really happy that you’re here now! Like, unbelievably happy. I can’t even describe it. It’s just...you never mentioned this before at all?”

“It was kind of a last-minute thing.”

“No kidding.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How were you even able to apply and get accepted quickly enough to make the decision to just come up here?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” Dan rubs his forehead in a lazy motion, unable to even lift his own mug to his lips. Phil takes it from Dan’s hands with a solicitous noise in the back of his throat and sets it down on the coffee table for him. Phil’s not an idiot--he knows there is much more lying beneath the surface of this--but the haggard circles under his best friend’s eyes prevent him from prodding any further. Not tonight, at least.

Phil picks his words carefully. “And your mum and dad know about this?”

“If by ‘this’ you mean transferring, then...yeah.” Again, the indecisiveness that, even for Dan, seems unusual and rings enigmatic to Phil’s ears.

Dan suddenly grabs his mug again and takes a swig. He doesn’t stop even as he visibly winces at the burn to his tongue. Phil doesn’t have the heart to question him further.

“There’s only one bedroom here, unfortunately. More like a closet, really. But the living room area is pretty expansive, isn’t it?” He gestures about with an attempt at a grin. “And guess what! This couch” --he slaps the cushions beneath them-- “folds out into a bed! I’m pretty sure my mum stored some spare beddings in the other closet--hang on a minute.”

“Phil! You’ll hurt yourself jumping around like that! I’m perfectly fine getting it myself--” Both boys spring up from the couch at nearly the same time, cutting each other off, rushing toward the narrow hall where they inevitably collide and topple in a mass of limbs and _oofs_. 

Phil’s eyes snap upward to meet Dan’s, which are just as wide as his own. He is suddenly--painfully--aware that their breaths are tangling together through tentative smiles. He can taste the uncertain apology mingled with secret exaltation in the air.

Neither one of them recalls how Dan’s hands came to grip Phil’s wrists or when they both closed their eyes. All Phil knows is he is alive, and Dan’s lips are on his, and there is a warmth unlike anything he’s ever known, knotted together with a hunger deep in his stomach. He doesn’t dare open his eyes. He leans forward off the carpet to deepen the kiss, and then at some point the two of them are sitting up, Dan straddling his lap, with Phil’s fingers ghosting over the skin between Dan’s jaw and his neck.

Dan pulls away and it’s like the cold reality comes rushing back in a wind over Phil. They lock eyes. Dan’s chocolate irises shimmer in uncertainty.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. And then he’s scrambling off Phil’s lap in a clumsy haste, but Phil grabs his wrist and traps him there before he can get much farther.

“No,” Phil says, a bit more sharply than he meant to, and he amends: “No, please. Don’t apologize.”

“I’m not--”

Phil already knows what he’s going to say, or at least is trying to. He cuts him off gently. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to decide right now what you are or aren’t.”

“How…?”

“It’s okay.”

“But I just--” Dan interrupts himself when it seems to occur to him only then that Phil’s fingers are still wrapped around his wrist. His gaze is drawn, transfixed, to where their skin meets. They may still have their legs half-tangled around each other in an awkward position on the carpet, but Phil knows the feeling. The nerves in his own hand feel like fire.

If he thought before that Dan showing up on his doorstep was a dream straight from heaven, then he wonders now what adjectives even exist for a moment like this.

Dan appears to come back to himself a second later. “But I just kissed you. Without warning. I basically...ambushed you and forced you into it.”

Phil frowns. “Funny, I kind of recall us falling to the floor together.”

“Phil, I’m trying to be serious!”

“So am I.”

“Wait--you’re not--angry with me?”

“Why would I be?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ you be?”

For once Phil has a priceless snippy reply to that, but his better judgment kicks in in time, and he stores away the wisecrack for another day. He clears his throat and releases Dan’s wrist from his grasp, only to gasp a little when Dan’s hand drifts back to his-- _out of reflex?_ his mind whispers--and tentatively brushes over his palm.

“I don’t know, kisses are kind of pleasant,” Phil says coyly, if only to cover up the sudden thumping of his heart. “So I’m not mad.”

A sliver of pain shoots across his chest for the first time, and though it leaves him breathless, he almost wishes for it to never leave.

He can see it in Dan’s eyes, how the younger boy is vacillating between wanting to believe him and resisting the urge to bolt. In the end, Dan makes up his mind and swiftly lowers his hand and starts to half-shuffle, half-stumble away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dan. We can talk about it in the morning, if you like.” At Dan’s wide-eyed expression, Phil tacks on: “You are staying here, right? It’s not like I’d let you blow all your money on a hotel room somewhere in a strange city you don’t know…”

“Yeah, here’s fine.” Dan’s voice is faint, barely a notch above a whisper.

Phil tells him, not unkindly, to finish his hot chocolate before it grows too cold. He busies his own hands with rearranging the cushions on the old couch, propping them up as best he can, and bringing out a pile of blankets for Dan to choose from. He sneaks repeated glances at Dan, but his back is turned to him, and Phil tries to pretend he doesn’t see how Dan’s hands seem to be trembling around the handle of the coffee mug.

All he’s aching to do right now is to scoop up the boy in a warm embrace and whisper in his ear that everything will be okay, but he knows his place.

Instead, he mulls over how surreal this entire evening still feels to him. His best friend of over two years, his best friend who once was nothing more than a pixelated image of smiles and dimples on his screen, his _best friend_ in the whole wide world is standing in his living room. After having kissed him. Sweat starts to slicken on his palms again at the mere remembrance of it.

Oh, how much there is to tell. So much yet to talk about. But Phil is an expert at pretense--if not for others’ benefit, then for his own sake. He would like to preserve the sanctity of this moment and just stand there, thinking, staring, _feeling_ , and pretend that it’s all simple and they will fall in love and it will be breathtaking and beautiful and there is absolutely nothing hanging there between them to talk over.

Dan looks almost sick to the stomach as he shuffles into a reclined position on the couch. Would he rather have the bed? Phil is about to offer it, when Dan’s gaze snaps upward and some kind of resolve hardens there in his eyes, and he murmurs with a worthy attempt of a smile, “Thank you so much for letting me stay. Good night.”

Phil balks another second in the doorway. What is it that he wants, precisely? It’s absurd, to offer to share the bed on the very first night of their meeting in person, much less after Dan had a near panic attack because of the implications of kissing him. 

Still, it takes hours for Phil to fall asleep. He lies there, in the dim glow of his night light, counting the blue and gray cracks again on his ceiling and listening for the rise and fall of Dan’s breath from the next room over.

~

Dan in the morning almost seems to be a different person from who he was the night before.

Phil awakens slowly to the clink of silverware on ceramic. There’s a low buzz in the back of his brain--he can’t place it, at first--and it takes several more seconds for him to realize he’s hearing the microwave. Padded footsteps, a pause, a timid rap on wood.

“You don’t have to be scared. I don’t bite,” Phil chuckles, still behind closed eyelids.

“Can I come in, though? I mean--are you--”

At that, Phil’s eyes snap open in realization. He springs up from the bed much faster than is healthy and almost swoons from the wave of dizziness that washes over him. “Uh, just a minute!” he hollers to the door. “Um--putting on clothes--getting decent--don’t come in until I tell you to!” Where is his binder? In his frantic haste he knocks the book and glass paperweight off his nightstand. The series of thumps and the muffled shatter seem to only alarm Dan further.

“...Are you sure you’re okay? It sounds like you’re wanking in there or something--”

The laughter rips out of Phil’s chest in a shock. “Haha, yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing,” he retorts to the door. Yes, there’s his binder, underneath the pile of sundry laundry he tossed on the floor last night. He yanks it on, followed by a cleaner t-shirt, and leaps for the door.

“Sorry about that,” he pants out. “I, uh, don’t really...sleep with clothes on?” His voice squeaks a tad at the end as if he were asking a question.

Dan grins back at him. “Was that really necessary information to disclose to me?”

Phil erupts in a nervous giggle, unsure of how to reply, and follows the other boy back into the kitchen.

“I’ve put out an application for a loan this morning,” Dan explains when Phil’s gaze falls questioningly on the open laptop and sheafs of papers on the counter.

“A loan? You mean for your tuition? I thought you already did that when you applied for the transfer.”

“Well, yeah, but a smaller loan for housing. I need some way to pay for the dorm room over Christmas break.”

“Why would you--”

“Obviously, I’m not going to burden you and just freeload my way into your flat all month,” Dan interrupts him at the same time that he attempts to spoon sugar into Phil’s mug of coffee and their hands collide and the white grains end up spilling everywhere across the tabletop.

Phil lets out a huff half from frustration. “I can sugar my own coffee just fine!” At Dan’s quirked eyebrow, he modulates his voice. “I mean, thanks for making breakfast. You didn’t have to.”

“Come on, it’s the least I can do after showing up in the middle of the night and _ruining your very lovely New Year’s Eve_ \--”

“Not that I was exactly having one.”

“Point is, I showed up out of the blue, didn’t let you know I was coming, crashed your place…”

“...Knocked me to the floor, kissed me, and had a mini breakdown?” Phil summarizes for him helpfully.

The color floods Dan’s cheeks far faster than he ever thought possible. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“For the last time, there’s nothing to apologize about. Not unless...you regret it?”

For the longest moment, Dan says nothing. His fingers move automatically to swirl his spoon around in his milk. Then he mutters, “I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s okay.”

“Is it?” Dan lifts his head to face him, and the light in his eyes is raw and tortured. “Is it really okay to not know? You’re the one that’s getting caught up in the middle of all this.”

Phil doesn’t argue that. “I know,” he says simply.

“Look, I--I don’t want to make you feel insulted or anything, I mean, by me bringing up this whole thing about living in the dorms. It’s just--there’s literally _so much_ going on right now--I’m not even kidding--and it’s not fair for you to have to get involved. I don’t even know why the hell I...I k-kissed you.” Dan hangs his head, stares at the hangnail on his thumb, cups his hands together in his lap. A sigh shudders through him. “I wish I could tell you everything, but I just...can’t.”

Phil takes a gigantic scoop of his cereal and chomps down on it, biting his tongue. The amount of information to process is beginning to feel overwhelming. “Is somebody keeping you from telling me?”

“No--not exactly.”

“Then why can’t you?”

“Look, I trust you, okay?” Dan runs both hands through his hair, messily, angrily, hastily, three or four times. “I trust you. Maybe I don’t trust myself.”

A pang of guilt twinges behind Phil’s ribcage. He knows the feeling all too well. “I get it. I won’t push for you to tell me until you’re ready.”

“But how will I know if I’m ready?”

Good question, Phil thinks bitterly to himself. He clears his throat. “You just will. I know we’ve considered ourselves best friends for a long time, Dan. That won’t change just because you’re having difficulty telling me something. I’m not an idiot--I do know there’s something going on--but _I_ trust you. I know you’ll tell me when it’s time.”

“God,” Dan breathes. He shovels some Lucky Charms into his mouth, nearly choking. Phil wonders if the moisture that has sprung to Dan’s eyes is from the large spoonful or from some profound and recondite emotion, or maybe from both. “God,” Dan says again. “What did I even do to deserve a best friend like you?”

“Oi, actually shut up. I don’t like sappy.”

“Listen to him talk--he ‘doesn’t like sappy.’ You’re nothing but a sap.”

“You actually have no idea.” Phil starts gulping down his coffee and winces at the heat. “But I’m not letting you off the hook so easily. You _are_ going to stay with me here, for free, until school starts back up again. Okay?”

“I--” Dan’s mouth opens and closes; he considers for a moment, and then finally relents with a nod. The expression that washes over his face then is unfathomable: somewhere between anticipation and anxiety, between terror and hope, but above all overwhelmed by a desperate and excited indecision.

Phil teases him about the milk on his chin. They become tactile again beneath the guise of roughhousing. Trails of fire spark up and down Phil’s arms wherever their skin touches. Phil doesn’t want to think about it--he’s done far too much thinking--and he lunges, still laughing, and captures Dan’s hand in his, both covered with droplets of milk. Dan flinches away; it’s undeniable.

But to cover the falter in his grin, Dan yells, “You’re disgusting!”

~

It’s the second day. Two days already since Dan showed up at his door with nothing but a backpack over his shoulder, eyes wide and hair mussed. Two days since the only dream that ever mattered to Phil came true.

Phil can understand the terror that lurks just behind the light in Dan’s eyes whenever their gazes intertwine. He feels it too, no matter how much he may deny it. All of a sudden, over the course of two days, the emptiness that used to ache in his lungs has been thrust out by a gush of air, and he’s breathing again, and it’s amazing and magnificent but he also knows it’s _all too much_. 

He’s splayed out on his carpeted floor next to Dan when the thought first hits him. They are both tender from their showers, hair wet and in disarray, heads slanted slightly toward the glow of the TV in the dark as they pretend to be interested in whatever’s playing. The thought hits him then, as he considers the inch of space that yet lies between their arms and he contemplates the giddying rush of air in his chest: _Too much life can kill you_.

His mother used to say, “Too much love can kill you.” She was wrong, at least partly. It’s the life that does the killing--this sudden blooming of things you never knew you could feel before, this stumble into a version more vivid than yourself, this headlong plunge into the knowledge that you can suddenly feel _alive_ when you never did in the past, and that it’s all because of one person.

And the terror? The terror is birthed by the very thought that there is no going back to before: to the empty and weary, yes, but also to ignorance.

The gentle cadence of Dan’s whisper breaks his pondering. “If you put glow stickers on your ceiling, it would be easier to pretend that we’re actually stargazing.”

“Oh? I didn’t know we were stargazing.” The carpet rasps against the back of Phil’s head as he turns to study the other boy’s profile.

As it often does these days, another flush rises to Dan’s cheekbones. “It’s just, there was a long camping scene in the movie and that got me thinking about how dark your ceiling looks compared to mine and how you could actually imagine it being like the sky if we had glow stickers.”

“You know I’d just buy them and then never get around to putting them up.”

“I could help you. We’re both well over six feet, you know.”

“I had no idea.” Phil grins drily at the ceiling. “You could still imagine them there, though.”

“What?”

“The stars. I’ve done it too, before. Pretending, I mean. Don’t we pretend there are lines connecting the stars to form constellations? Well, I know exactly how many cracks are in the ceiling here. I know which ones look blue when the telly’s on, and which ones look brown when the light’s coming from the kitchen. I haven’t quite mastered which ones look like orange with the sunrise, but they would be fun to count with you.”

Dan’s chest rises and falls. He breathes out heavily from his nose. He still does not turn his head to look at Phil. “Sounds like you’ve lain here an awful lot.”

“You could say that.” Phil didn’t expected his voice to catch then, but it does.

“You could have talked to me.”

Something in the tenderness of Dan’s tone tells Phil he means no reproach by the comment. Phil offers a nearly inaudible sigh. “I didn’t have to, though. I think you always knew.”

“I guess.” Abruptly, Dan shifts onto his side and cradles his head to look at Phil better. “How often did it happen?”

Phil hates the lump in his throat. For a second he is physically incapable of speaking. Dan continues to train his gaze on him patiently.

“More than I wanted it to,” Phil manages to say. It sounds almost like a gasp. When did the tears start burning his eyes?

“People are idiots,” Dan whispers.

Phil has to give a wet laugh at that. “Yeah.” In that moment, they both know that the other knows exactly what they are referring to.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?” Phil glances back at Dan and finds he can’t look away. He doesn’t need to. The other simply gazes back, contentment shining in his irises, for once free of the vacillation that nearly seemed to have taken up permanent residence there. It must only be a second and a half, but it feels like a lifetime that their eyes lock before everything starts moving again and Dan’s lips are against his and the heat surprises Phil and sends the air swirling around them.

Dan only pulls back for a millisecond to draw in a deep breath, and then they are kissing again with even more fervor than before, and something--this thing, whatever boundary might have previously been standing there--it seems to have shattered in a shower of stars between them.

Slowly, Phil reaches forward to cup the curve of Dan’s chin. The younger boy responds and runs his hands over Phil’s shoulders. He shudders at the iciness and the fire of the touch. 

“Wait,” he gasps out. He’s hoarse from the kiss. “Are you sure?”

The playful twinkle in Dan’s eyes is enough answer for him. “No talking,” Dan mutters. He lunges forward to reconnect their lips and dip his tongue behind Phil’s teeth.

Before long, they find themselves in a semi-upright mass of limbs bumping up against the foot of the couch. A giggle bubbles up from Phil in the middle of their kiss; he feels even Dan breaking a grin. Hands are everywhere: on their shoulders, around their necks, combing through their hair, drifting down to the hem of Phil’s shirt.

Somewhere behind the haze of his arousal, alarm shoots through Phil. He flinches and seizes Dan’s left hand before it can slip underneath his t-shirt.

Dan pulls back, making Phil whimper under his breath from the rush of cool air between them. Dan’s brows are knit in consternation. “Are you okay? I’m sorry if I--”

“I’m fine! I just--this is great. Kissing is great.” Phil’s babbling. “Just--not yet, okay?”

“I’m sorry.”

“No! Don’t apologize. I…” Phil huffs, angry at himself for having so expertly shattered the moment. The guilt contorting Dan’s face is too much for him. Before he can take it back, Phil hears himself spinning the first of many lies to come. “This is great, okay? It’s just that I haven’t...you know.”

Dan’s eyes widen. “Oh! Well, that’s cool. I mean, that’s okay! It’s not like I’ve done anything either, like…” 

“I’m sorry. I ruined the mood.”

“No, you didn’t.” Dan smiles coyly. 

Ever so gently, Phil starts to disentangle Dan’s legs from his lap, but he keeps one arm wrapped around the other’s shoulders and pulls Dan closer to rest his head under his chin. “Let’s just stay like this for a while.”

“Okay.”

“I never would’ve guessed you haven’t done this before either,” Phil smirks into the dark. He draws in a deep breath and inhales the scent of Dan’s curls that are fast drying in the cool air. He could get used to sitting on the floor every day like this.

“Why, were you blown away by my ministrations?”

“Who the heck even uses the word ‘ministrations’?”

The vibration of Dan’s chuckle rumbles against Phil’s chest. The younger boy elbows him in the ribs, probably harder than he intended to. Phil keeps his grimace to himself.

“Hush now. I said no talking,” Dan whispers. His voice sounds scratchy, attractively so, in the dim atmosphere.

Time drifts lazily around them. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, Phil struggles to stand up and tugs Dan upward with him, murmuring to him that sleeping like that all night will give him terrible posture. Dan grunts unintelligibly in reply and hangs limply against Phil’s shoulder, barely able to place one foot in front of the other as they make their way slowly down the hallway. He only seems to come half-awake when he realizes they are standing in front of the door to Phil’s bedroom.

“Mm...on couch,” Dan slurs.

“No, your back must be killing you,” Phil breathes back. “Heard it...cracking...when you stood up…” Panting from the effort, he finally manages to use one hand to pull back the duvet from his mattress and push Dan down onto the bed with his other hand. Dan emits a low whine in the back of his throat.

Phil glances around at the mess on his floor, sluggish but somewhat more alert than before. “Where are your pajamas?”

“Mm fine.”

“No, you can’t sleep in your jeans. You’ll probably get a stroke.”

“Don’t...care.”

“I can lend you a pair of mine.”

Dan simply moans in the most half-hearted response imaginable.

“Come on, at least take off your jeans.” When Dan doesn’t even make a sound this time, Phil climbs onto the bed and nudges Dan’s side with his knee. “Dan. Dan. Wake up. I’m sorry, you have to take off your jeans. You’ll hate yourself tomorrow if you don’t.”

Dan still offers no response except to shake his head weakly. Phil relents, breathing out a sigh through his teeth, and moves to gingerly unbutton the other boy’s pants and shimmy them off his legs. It’s a Herculean feat that leaves him red-faced--not just from the physical effort of it all--but he obstinately adheres to the task and somehow is able to slip a fresh pair of boxers onto Dan. He folds the black jeans, casts then into a corner on top of his own laundry, and turns to go.

Just then, Dan seizes Phil’s wrist with no sign of letting go. “Stay.”

“But I--”

“Please.”

Phil turns back, and in the dark, illuminated only by his night light, he sees Dan’s eyes are open, wider than they should be considering how unconscious he seemed just a moment ago. The contours of his cheekbones throw his brows into high contrast, making him seem as though he were hypnotizing Phil into getting back into the bed.

Phil sighs. “All right.”

And as he clambers back in and the mattress dips under his weight, he cannot help but share a secret smile with himself. Still, he finds himself overly cautious to lie down at a distance from Dan. At first he doesn’t know what to do with his long limbs, but then he decides to lay his head back over his right hand and cross the other hand over his chest. When he glances back to the side, Dan’s eyes seem to be closed and the silhouette of his body is rising and falling with slow, even breaths.

It does not take long at all for Phil to fall asleep after that.

~

The world of Phil’s dreams burns behind his eyelids. It slams into him with a scream and a fury like never before. 

He tries to struggle against whatever it is that holds him in place, but it is all in vain. He never learns. The stars around him are swirling vertiginously and pulsing with fire in time with the racing pulse of his heart. Hands, icy and immovable as steel, grip him by the wrists. A numbness shoots through his palms and fingers above his head. His chest is crushed by an endless weight. All his limbs are paralyzed. 

He feels the scream rip from his throat, but no sound comes out. Only the roar of his captor fills his ears.

“Phil.”

 _Why do I love you?_ It is always the same thought racing through his mind.

The other voice, dark and deep, begins to speaks again. It is always speaking and it never stops. _Why are you doing this to me? I love you. You’re mine. You’re mine. You’re no one else’s and no one else can have you_.

“Phil! _Phil!_ ”

Phil rushes up to the surface of the sea of stars and fire with the gasp of a drowning man. He’s already upright in bed, t-shirt drenched in sweat, chest heaving with the effort to draw in air.

“Phil!” Dan’s hand brushes against his shoulder, and instinctively Phil flinches away. He regrets it immediately and forces himself to lean closer again to Dan.

“Sorry,” he rasps out. He covers his eyes with his trembling hands, hoping the moisture on his cheeks will not catch the moonlight and draw Dan’s attention to his tears.

“Don’t be sorry. Sounded like a nasty dream.” Dan reaches out again tentatively to brush the wet strands of hair from Phil’s forehead.

“Something like that.”

“Do you need anything? Water? Another shirt, maybe?”

“Just a--” Phil’s request is cut off by the nausea that bubbles up from the pit of his stomach. He bolts off the bed and fumbles through the hallway, crashing against several walls along the way, before finding his way to the bathroom and stumbling inside. Thankfully, he doesn’t forget to lock the door behind him. Hardly two seconds pass, and he’s hurling into the toilet.

The soft rap of Dan’s knuckles on the door manages to sound worried, as if that were even possible.

“Phil? Is everything okay?”

Phil’s first wave of nausea fades with the next few seconds of pathetic retching, and he finds he has enough strength to answer through the door. “Don’t worry about it! I’m fine!”

“Are you sure? There’s, um...there looked like there was blood on the bed. Don’t you think--”

“That can’t be blood!” Phil glances down at the spot between his legs and only now realizes the wetness on his sweatpants is a stain of angry crimson. “Shit,” he mutters. “Shit, shit, fucking--”

Dan’s voice returns less than a minute later. “It is blood, Phil. Is there something you’re not--I mean, do you need medicine? Or the hospital? I can call the ambulance--”

“No ambulance!” Phil hears the panic in his own voice and struggles to modulate his tone. “I mean, that’s not necessary. It’s, um...hemorrhoids.”

“Hema-what?”

Phil is interrupted by another bout of vomit and retches for another two minutes or so. When he finally thinks it’s over, he struggles to raise himself against the toilet seat, and his arms are quaking with the effort to move himself upright. Somehow, he is able to reach for a tissue and wipe his face.

“Hemorrhoids,” he calls back through the door. He winces at the new lie. “It’s not serious. I have medicine for it. I’m sorry I ruined the bed. I’ll change it when I come out.”

“No need to be sorry,” Dan murmurs back. His voice suddenly seems much closer, as if he’s sat or knelt down with his head by the crack in the doorway near the knob.

“I know, it’s just…”

“Take your time in there, okay? I’ll go find new sheets. I’ll take care of it. Just, er, tell me which closet to look in?”

Phil’s shoulders shudder with a sigh of relief. “Second door from the bedroom.” He sits for another minute huddled against the cool side of the toilet bowl with his hands around his knees, listening for the padding of Dan’s footsteps to fade into the distance, and when he is sure Dan is preoccupied, he forces himself to stand and check on his period. Another glance at the stain between his legs sends yet another wave of nausea through him, but this time he tamps it down and grounds himself by gripping the bathroom sink.

The last time he bled must have been over four months ago, but he really shouldn’t be surprised. He’s never had a nightmare this vivid either in four months.

Thankfully, he’s always been anxious of accidents like this happening and has kept everything he needs stocked here in the bathroom. Once he’s cleaned himself up and exchanged his ruined sweatpants for a clean pair of boxers, he stands indecisive for a minute, and then struggles to slip out of his t-shirt and binder. He knows how risky it is to take it off, but he also knows from experience how sore he will be in a few hours after sleeping all night in the binder.

Dan’s footsteps come pattering back too soon for Phil’s comfort. For a second he tenses, waiting for Dan to knock again or jiggle the doorknob, but the pause in Dan’s step only lasts another moment before he apparently decides to head straight back into the bedroom.

Despite the uncontrollable shaking of his fingers, Phil finishes up quickly and yanks on a spare t-shirt, much larger than the last one. With a tentative inhalation he unlocks the bathroom door and peeps out.

“Where are you?” he calls out.

“Already back in bed, you dingus.”

Phil makes a confused face in the dark as he wanders back through the doorway of the bedroom. “What, you got the fitted sheet on that fast?”

“’Course not,” Dan mumbles into the pillow from where he’s lying facedown on the mattress. “What do you think I am, a wizard?”

All the tension leaves Phil just then in a half-nervous giggle as he climbs back in on his side and the fitted sheet, sure enough, curls up from the corner and hits him in the face.

“You’re the worst person ever.”

Dan rolls over onto his side to reveal a cocky smirk on his face. “Say that again to my lips.”

“Oi, you’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“Whatever. Are you okay, though?”

“Huh?” Phil clumsily accepts the glass of water that Dan takes from the nightstand and presses into his hands.

“The bleeding. I couldn’t find any stain treatment chemicals in your closet, so I just flushed the sheets with water in the kitchen for now. But are you okay?”

“Yeah, I took my medicine. It’s okay now.” Phil downs the water and has to set the glass down on the carpet before his hands start shaking again.

“You sure?”

Phil breathes out a chuckle through his nose, a little harder than he intended. “It’s fine, Dan. Not like anything I haven’t dealt with before.” The words leave his mouth before he realizes he didn’t mean to sound so cryptic.

“’M sorry,” Dan sighs. He rolls a little closer. “D’you want me to hold you or rub your back or something?”

“I would _love_ for you to hold me,” Phil mutters, and adds quickly, “but...I can’t. It’s...it’s not you, okay? It’s hard to explain.”

Try as he might, Dan seems incapable of completely concealing the glint of hurt in his eyes.

“I’m a little touchy,” Phil rushes to clarify. “Like, literally touchy. Close physical contact is just...difficult for me. It has nothing to do with you. It’s...something from my past.”

“Oh.” Dan’s tone seems entirely different now. More alert, more quizzical.

“Yeah. I--” Phil has to clear his throat. “I’d like to tell you someday, of course. Just not now. I can’t.”

“Like how I told you I can’t tell you about my situation...because I don’t really trust myself?”

Phil’s little smile is filled with irony. “Something like that.”

~

The first day of the semester rolls around too quickly for Phil. He and Dan have spent nearly three weeks together, alone in the flat with all the space to themselves, yet somehow it’s felt like less than three days. Dan, angel that he is, not once presses Phil to talk about his issues with physical contact; nor does he question Phil too much when the latter comes awake in the middle of the night with a gasp and a cry. Sometimes he ventures to stroke the back of Phil’s hair tentatively, and Phil lets him. The lightness of the boy’s fingers threading through his damp locks is often all it takes to ground him and bring him back to calmness.

Phil has noticed things about Dan, too--little things that he dares not ask about, but stores away in a special part of his memory reserved just for Dan Howell. There are the glances that Dan casts in his direction from beneath his lashes, burning at once with anticipation and apprehension. There are the long minutes Dan spends standing in the middle of the hallway in the dim glow of the moonlight, staring down at the blank screen of the phone in his hand, thinking that Phil does not see him from the doorway of the bedroom. And then there are the furtive looks that Phil knows Dan fixes on him from behind, or from the side as they marathon _Star Wars_ or wait for the next game of Mario Kart to load. The profound meaning glistening there in Dan’s eyes is indecipherable and it feels like a secret, but what Phil knows without a doubt is that in those moments Dan looks at him as if he were a stranger and the single overwhelming emotion on his visage is that of fear.

Dan moves into the dorms the day before class. Phil doesn’t put up much of a fight because of the look of sheer determination on the other boy’s face, but if he were to have his way, he would insist that Dan live with him in the flat and maybe only pay a minimal fraction of what he must be taking out in loans now to live in the dorms. To be perfectly honest, Phil knows he doesn’t even want to charge Dan anything--what kind of person would he be?--but it’s the best excuse his mind can make for keeping him in the flat. Extra rent money for him, savings for Dan. But Phil knows that staying together is probably the most distracting living situation for them both, and he does his best to convince himself that maybe this is the same reason for Dan not wanting to stay with him.

It turns out that Phil’s angst is almost wasted when he comes to realize just how frequently Dan tends to drop by the flat anyway. He comes straight to the apartment from class on his third day of school, shy and shaking a little, but Phil doesn’t ask questions and the other boy just pulls him in for a hug with his arms wrapped round Phil’s neck. Phil simply holds him there as they stand in the middle of the doorway, and he closes his eyes and breathes in Dan’s scent. He smells warm and familiar, a little stale and with a bit of the acridness of staying outdoors too long, but he doesn’t mind. Dan heads straight to the shower then and only laughs when Phil yells out a joke about how they’re only best friends because his shower is not as gross as the one in the dorms.

From then on, they slip all too easily into a routine. Dan’s classes run every day while Phil only has to go in a few days a week, so they take advantage of the chance to take the tube together on some mornings. The loneliness of being left at the flat on other days doesn’t last, because soon Dan is coming straight over in the afternoons when Phil is home, and Phil starts trying to surprise the other boy with pasta or pre-made Mexican dinners from the store or even a cheap pizza and Ribena. After all, it’s the least he can do when his best friend is the one who saves him from being utterly alone with his thoughts. Phil hates how he can spend hours upon hours spiraling into the memories of the looks of terror behind Dan’s eyes and trying to pick apart the boy he’s known for almost two years.

It’s a Friday night over pizza and a beer, and Phil is staring at Dan’s profile in the dim glow of the TV. The air around them seems to shiver a little, maybe because he’s lightly buzzed, but it’s different, too. What felt cold and blue before when Phil used to lie on this couch alone just three months ago has now begun to diffuse in a softening warmth. The light plays in a valley of shades, orange and pale yellow and brown and only the slightest hint now of gray. The outline of Dan’s head is illuminated by a halo.

Under the fuzzy blanket, Phil reaches out his foot and pokes Dan’s ankle with his toe.

“Stop,” Dan says, eyes still trained on the TV, but a grin flickers across his lips.

Phil pokes him again. He feels shy all of a sudden. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Dan mutters, “I’m always here.”

“Yeah, I know, but...I’m glad.”

“You seriously don’t get annoyed with me?”

Phil scoffs a little. “Annoyed? I’m enraged. Get out.”

“Oi.” Dan gives him a slight kick. “Shut up, turd.”

“Insulting me in my own home, too.”

“I only like you for your shower, you know. And the raspberry-scented body wash.”

“Sounds like somebody should be going to the grocery store and restocking the body wash at least once in a while.” Phil does his best to hide his grin. Before he can chicken out, he dips his hand below the blanket and finds Dan’s hand and seizes it.

Only then does Dan turn to look at him fully, and then down at where their fingers are intertwined under the fleece. He glances back up at Phil with a quizzical quirk in his eyebrow.

“Today was a good day,” Phil whispers by way of explanation. “Touching’s not so bad sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Dan breathes. “Guess not.”

Phil feels overwhelmed once again by that familiar ache to pull Dan close to him in a hug. He doesn’t, though. Maybe something in the tenseness running between Dan’s shoulders stops him, or the way Dan looks straight at him with honest and open eyes, eyes so honest that behind the warmth and longing he spies yet again the nameless fright.

They fall asleep with their hands interlocked under the blanket, not moving, not quite on opposite ends of the couch but still far enough that their sides are not touching. Phil wakes sometime in the wee hours of the morning to a soft squeeze of his hand and falls back asleep with a stupid smile on his face. 

When he wakes up again several hours later, the sun is streaming into the living room through the blind slats in disorienting geometric shadows. Dan is nowhere to be found.

~

Dan doesn’t come back that afternoon, nor on Sunday, nor the Monday after that. Phil texts him once on Sunday, to no response until Monday around four in the morning. It’s some bullshit reply about needing to study for first exams. Monday evening, after Phil has waited enough hours in order to not seem like a massive creep, he offers a “responsible study break” with games and tacos, ready to go whenever Dan wants to come over.

Once again, Dan doesn’t reply. Phil knows he shouldn’t feel so disappointed. He didn’t even go out to buy the taco shells in the first place because somewhere deep inside him he’s known this would be the outcome.

It’s the following Tuesday, wrapped in the quivering stillness of February, when Phil decides he’s had enough of staring blankly at his homework in front of him. Without a second thought, he grabs his quilted jacket, his wallet and his phone and races down the stairs from the flat.

His phone reads 3:42 when the taxi arrives at the front of campus; the clock on the tower rings quarter to 4 by the time Phil has jogged toward the cluster of buildings where Dan’s afternoon classes are held. He still has less than half an hour before Dan comes out, so he redirects his steps to the nearby café. Through the buzz of voices around him he finds himself ordering two caramel macchiatos.

Face after unfamiliar face makes its way past Phil in a blur as he stands on tiptoe over the crowd that is streaming out of Dan’s building. Five more minutes pass, then ten, and then finally he spots somebody he recognizes, the guy who opened the door to the lobby of Dan’s dorm before.

“Hey!” he calls out, sounding a bit frazzled and quizzical. The guy turns and stamps on his cigarette. Phil rushes on, “Are you in Dan’s class? Have you seen him come out yet?”

“The one on legal language?”

“I don’t know, but probably.”

“Yeah, I’m in his class, but he didn’t show up today.”

Phil doesn’t know why he’s surprised at that. But then again, it would say very little of him as a best friend if he predicted all along that Dan would cut class and did nothing about it.

“Oh,” is what comes out of his mouth instead. He feels stupid. “D’you have any idea where he might be?”

“Nah, mate. Sorry. Maybe call him again or something. Catch you around later?”

“Yeah, sure…”

The weight of the two coffees in his hands feels suddenly ridiculous. Phil takes a miserable sip from his and trudges around the side of the building, debating with himself whether he should call Dan now or give him some more space. It’s a terrible moment when he realizes just how _little_ he possibly knows Dan. The other boy may have shared his low moments with him over Skype in the past, but Phil has never witnessed it in action, much less known just how bad it can get. And now he is at a loss how to handle it because he knows he himself would crave solitude in the same situation, but the same treatment may be the furthest thing from healthy for Dan.

Phil finds his feet getting heavier and he slumps onto the nearest bench once he reaches the inner gardens. Sweat, cold and unforgiving, seeps out across his skin and reminds him of the inexplicable guilt he cannot escape. He’s unsure of when his eyes started to blur over with moisture, but as he raises his head to watch the babbling fountain in the center of the gardens, he blames the water spraying in his direction.

And then he freezes.

“Dan?”

There’s no mistaking it, the skinny frame cloaked in soaking flannel and the dark, wet strands plastered to his cheeks, even if nothing in this scene makes any sense to Phil. The boy is crouched--no, seated--in the middle of the fountain, in the direct path of the spout, and he’s got his knees tucked up to his chin and his arms wrapped round his legs as the water gushes over and around him. 

Phil doesn’t realize until later that he’s dropped the coffee cups and taken off at a run toward the fountain. He doesn’t even stop at the stone basin. He leaps in, gasps at the icy sting inside his trainers, wades toward Dan’s huddled figure through cold waves and what appears to be a sheaf of school papers floating across his path. The ink has long bled into the fountain in cloudy jets of red and blue.

Phil comes to a halt next to Dan. He towers over him and the droplets fall from his hair onto the top of Dan’s head, but Dan makes no form of acknowledgment except to unwrap his arms from his knees and lean slightly closer to Phil.

“Dan?” Phil asks tenderly.

“You found me,” Dan replies in what should be a voice of surprise but instead turns out to be an unreadable monotone.

“What are you even doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

After a moment, Phil decides there is no hostility in Dan’s question, only the faint sound of a childlike guilt. “I, uh...bought you coffee because I thought it might make you feel better. But I guess that’s gone now.”

Dan surprises him this time by offering a wet laugh. “I’ll have to pay you back.”

Phil ventures to place a hand on Dan’s shoulder. He breathes a sigh of relief when Dan doesn’t flinch away. “Dan,” he murmurs. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I...I _don’t know_.”

“Well, I’m confused too, because I thought everything was going so well and we were having a nice night together and then--” Phil lets out a huff and pulls himself to a stop. This isn’t his time to be talking.

“I don’t know.”

“I know, Dan. It’s okay. Just talk to me.”

“It’s all too much. I can’t...I just can’t. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“What’s too much?”

“School...Manchester...law...the future… _this_...”

Phil dares not ask what _this_ is.

“Look,” Phil starts out reasonably. “We’ve all got horrid grades before, yeah? Sure, it feels like crap, but we can always do better. And if you totally don’t think law is worth it, you could always look into other careers.”

“But you don’t understand! I _have_ to.”

“Why?”

“Because! Then I won’t amount to anything!”

Phil feels like he should be offended but decides to refrain on the judgments. “That’s not true. There’s a lot of things out there you can do. But you shouldn’t be worrying yourself right now about what you’re going to do. It won’t help. Right now you should come back to my place and just do nothing for a little while. I think that’s what you need.”

“You don’t understand,” Dan says again. But at least he’s disentangled his limbs and tried to stand on shaky legs next to Phil.

“Then help me understand.”

“Phil, I…” For the first time Dan lifts his eyes to meet Phil’s, and Phil is struck speechless by the rawness of the pain there, the intensity of the fear and the flash of anger that latches at its heels. 

Of an impulse, Phil grabs Dan’s hand and squeezes it. “Tell me. I’ll do my damnedest to understand.”

Dan gulps. “You know how sometimes you lie on the carpet and pretend there are stars on your ceiling and you end up watching the entire sunrise from your window?” Phil nods. “I guess...it’s like that. A little. Except that there’s not even any sunrise to watch and even if I wanted to imagine stars, I can’t. My brain can’t do anything except think about how dark all the shadows are and how I can’t move from where I’m lying on the carpet, and...it gives me hell because I know how pathetic I must be to not be able to get up or do anything besides fixate on the darkness, but it’s...fuck, there’s nothing else I _can_ do.”

The breath of a second fills the space between them.

“Sounds like a pretty active brain you have there,” Phil says with a wobbly smile.

Neither of them can ever tell why, but somehow that seems to be the breaking point for Dan. Tears flow down his face without ceasing and they’re hot and fast and his voice is thick with nerves. He leans into Phil’s shoulder and even as he squeezes back at Phil’s hand till it hurts,  
he cries out, “I’m not gay.”

That drives Phil to envelop the boy in his arms and to just hold him tight as the water sprays down on them and trickles along the skin between their bodies.

“I know,” he says, because that’s only ever the right answer for the two of them.

~

They lie in bed watching the flickering shadows of the nightlight on the ceiling. Not touching, but tonight lying side by side is enough.

“Why the fountain?”

“I don’t know. I guess I needed to feel something.”

“You feel a lot of things.”

“Not this, on most days. Not clean.”

~

Phil spends far too long in the shower. He knows all too well that the water never helps, but he awoke with a scream caught in his throat and the urge to crawl out of his skin, and the scalding downpour on his back is the only thing painful enough to distract him now.

He dreamt of Yazmin, and not for the first time. Tonight marks the third night alone since the letter came. Dan hasn’t a clue, or at least if he does, he says nothing directly about it. He simply wakes him whenever the scream manages to tear its way out of his lungs. Dan tries not to shake him; he calls his name, softly at first, then louder, and then sometimes he switches on the light from his phone until Phil jolts awake with a gasp.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about what you’re dreaming of,” Dan whispered the other night as he threaded his fingers through Phil’s damp hair. “You know, when you hear yourself saying it aloud and then sometimes it starts to feel not so much of a nightmare anymore.”

Phil wants to. He wants to believe him, he wants to trust him. Dan has no idea. But how does he explain that the eyes of a little girl are the heart of his night terrors?

“You’re the best,” Phil says instead, every time. His voice is raw.

Tonight he didn’t scream. He felt himself falling into the green abyss of those wide eyes, eyes that transform each night from a little girl’s into a grown man’s, predatory and angry and _knowing_. He was lost, falling and falling, grasping onto nothing, until suddenly he fell back into the realm of consciousness and the horror closing up his throat was still every bit as real. He got out of bed quickly and padded to the bathroom and turned on the shower on high, wanting nothing else than to claw at his own skin.

A rap at the door makes him flinch. 

“Phil? Is everything okay?”

Phil doesn’t answer. He can’t.

Dan knocks at the door again, more insistent this time, and then again, almost pounding. “Phil? Phil. You’re starting to scare me. Are you okay? Just tell me what’s wrong. Phil, talk to me! Phil!”

“Sorry,” Phil mutters through the steam wafting around him, but he’s certain the sound of his voice never reaches Dan. After another second of hesitation and with great difficulty, he finally unwraps his arms from around his torso and reaches over to shut off the shower. In the residual trickle of water he makes the emotionless observation that his arms and hands are red, rubbed raw, and the undersides of his fingernails are crusted over with blood.

“Phil?”

Phil finally raises his voice to answer. “I’ll be right out.”

Of their own accord his fingers work for him, doing what he has to do. Towel off the droplets from his skin, wipe down the streaks of angry pink, slip on an oversized t-shirt with a faded Muse album cover on the front. Still bunching up the towel in front of him, he pads over at last to unlock the door and lets it swing open. The steam escapes with a sigh and the cold comes rushing back in. It reminds him of reality--as if he’s ever even been able to escape it--and it makes him shiver a little despite himself. He only realizes then that he never dried off his hair, and the wet strands are plastered to his brow, dripping down his cheeks in rivulets like tear tracks.

Dan looks like he wants to step right into the bathroom, but he catches himself, and it’s all he can do to help the contortion of worry across his face. “Phil,” he says, softer now. “Why’d you get up and shower in the middle of the night? Did you have another bad dream?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of? Oh my God, Phil, your arms. What the--”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not! We need to get that plastered right--”

Dan doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. In a sudden burst of adrenaline he never knew he possessed, Phil surges forward and cups Dan’s face in both his hands and captures the boy’s lips with his own. The panic dies in Dan’s throat and is rapidly replaced with a succession of astonishment, confusion, and then a moan.

Dan yanks himself away. “Phil! What the hell?”

“Just shut up,” Phil half-orders, half-begs him. “I’ve missed you and it’s not fucking _fair_ \--” He cuts himself off by swooping in for another desperate kiss. Dan is no longer sluggish to reciprocate. His hands lace together behind Phil’s neck, tangling in the hair still warm and dripping from the shower, and he leans in more insistently, tongue slipping in past Phil’s lips and exploring behind his teeth. Phil groans and pulls Dan even closer until they’re flush against each other. They can both hear each other’s heartbeats jackhammering in their chest, but that stops nothing. If anything, it eggs Phil on to know that maybe, just maybe, this guy is just as hopelessly crazy as he is.

Phil starts moving, pushing Dan backward down the hallway toward the bedroom, even as his arms encircle the younger boy’s waist and his hands run up and down his back. At some point Phil stumbles and as he’s catching himself his thigh lodges between Dan’s legs. Dan yelps into his mouth at the unexpected friction in his crotch but doesn’t stop. He pulls Phil back with him more urgently, more impatiently until the back of his leg hits the bedframe and they collapse backward onto the duvet with Phil firmly on top of him.

They pull apart only for the briefest of seconds to breathe before Phil releases some sound between a moan and a growl and he seizes Dan’s head by the hair and kisses him again. He trails kisses all over Dan’s mouth, his jaw, eventually down his neck, and as he does so he faintly hears Dan whimpering and gasping out a never-ending stream of profanity. With a flicker of a smile, Phil nips at the skin in the dip of Dan’s clavicle. Dan writhes beneath him in response, and his hands wander down from Phil’s nape along his spine and to the hem of his long shirt.

“Oh my God. Right there,” Dan babbles while Phil continues to bite and lick down his neck.

Phil shifts until he’s fully straddling Dan and he’s rewarded with another groan from the other boy. The bulge in his jeans seems painful, Phil thinks. Without thinking, his lips still latched onto Dan’s jawline, Phil unbuttons the jeans and pushes them down a little. Dan gasps a little from the relief.

As if taking his cue from Phil, Dan sweeps his hand tentatively across the tender skin under the huge t-shirt. Phil’s breathing grows ragged at the contact. “Touch me,” he murmurs into Dan’s ear.

Dan complies. He starts to lift the shirt, taking his time a bit, and he lets his fingers dance up and down Phil’s back and stomach. He meets Phil’s lips again, more gently, and Phil can almost hear the smile in his voice as Dan mutters into their kiss: “So soft. So pretty.”

Phil takes the liberty of biting Dan’s bottom lip. Dan’s hands start to work faster under the shirt until finally he pulls it off in one movement, forcing Phil to sit up a little on his knees with his arms out.

“Oh, I--”

It takes all the withered remnants of self-control inside Phil to keep from covering his chest. Feeling stupid now--still straddled across a very aroused and very stunned Dan--Phil slowly lowers his arms to his sides and leans back. His hands start to shake. He runs them through his hair first, then moves them to cover his vagina. Damn it, his fingers won’t stop shaking. Everything’s getting colder again all of a sudden, all too fast.

The tears hit the back of his eyes sooner than he expected.

“Phil, wait!”

Nothing can stop him. He doesn’t even pause to make sense of what Dan is babbling behind him. He twists and stumbles off the bed, gropes blindly for his shirt, yanks it on and hears a rip and makes a dash for the door. Where are his keys? Fuck, it doesn’t even matter anymore.

The icy concrete of the fire escape is a shock to his bare feet but he keeps running. Chest heaving, eyes burning, he keeps running, up and up and then upward still. His heart is hammering in his ribs, his blood screaming through his head.

Finally, finally he bursts through the steel door and slows to a halt on the gravelly concrete of the roof. His senses come filtering back to him one by one: the blaring of horns down below; the acridness of cigarette and chimney smoke in the air; the moisture of a recent drizzle against his skin; the blurry imbrication of the Manchester city lights in front of him, shimmering and shivering like bokeh.

Calmer now, Phil makes his way to the brick wall at the edge of the roof. It comes up just high enough for him to lean forward against it on his elbows. He draws in deep breaths just as he remembers he’s taught himself. Little by little, the constriction in his chest begins to loosen and his heart no longer throbs so much. With a deep sigh, he hangs his head and thinks.

Dan knows. There is no going back from that first thought, nor from the truth behind it.

Some may say he was brave--stupidly brave--for initiating things like that with Dan and letting him discover how his body looked in that way. Phil knows better. He knows he was a coward. He knows just how long he’s been mustering the courage to tell Dan, and he also knows just how many times he’s failed. Dan doesn’t deserve to know like this. He never did.

Phil’s breath shudders through him. He always has to ruin things.

“Phil? Are you up here? I--oh, Phil!”

Phil can’t bring himself to turn around, even when he hears the scuff of Dan’s trainers coming closer. He covers his eyes with a hand and sags against the brick wall. Only a soft puff of air in the quiet lets him know that Dan is standing right next to him.

Dan says nothing for a long, long while. Neither does Phil.

Dan exhales and speaks at last. “You scared me back there. I thought you came up here to...you know.”

His throat still stopped up with emotion, Phil manages a nod; though he doesn’t know at this point what a nod would mean.

“Are you okay?”

“I guess.” Phil rasps out a laugh. “I’m more concerned if you’re okay.”

A frown colors Dan’s voice. “Why?”

“You know why. I just...sort of took you by surprise. In all senses of the word possible.”

The ensuing silence lasts so long that Phil is forced to glance sideways to read Dan’s expression. What he finds is unexpected: soft eyes, a slightly ironic and forgiving little smile, a twitch at the dimple in his cheek.

“You know I wasn’t actually surprised,” Dan murmurs.

Phil blinks. “What--you weren’t?”

“Nope.”

“What the...but how? How long have you known?”

Dan shrugs. “Our second kiss. When you flinched. We were already so close and I had my other hand on your back and I...felt it, I guess. Your binder, that is.”

“Shit. I--just. Shit.”

“Listen to you swearing all over the place now.” Dan’s laugh comes out a bit wobbly.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t think I needed to if you weren’t saying anything either. I...I’m sorry if my bringing it up would have made you feel more at ease. I just didn’t really know how to handle it because obviously it was a sensitive topic for you.”

“I should have told you,” Phil mutters. He’s torn with guilt. “How are you not angry with me?”

“Why should I be?”

“You don’t...you don’t deserve someone like me. _Something_ like me. You never asked for this.”

Dan’s voice is just on the edge of stern. “And neither did you. Listen, Phil. I’m not angry. I swear. I have no right to be! I knew it would all come out eventually when you were ready. But until then, I thought it wasn’t my place to force a conversation you weren’t comfortable with.”

Phil simply stares at him, vacillating between doubt and a hopeful desperation to believe him. He aches to reach out and grasp the idea that maybe, possibly, Dan really isn’t angry.

Dan’s eyes are glistening in the night lights. “Phil, look at me. I mean it. I’m not mad.”

Phil nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.” 

“But I don’t understand. You looked so shocked when you took off my shirt a while ago.”

“I suppose I was more surprised that you actually let me. I wasn’t expecting that.” A smirk tugs at the corners of Dan’s lips. “Y’know, even if we hadn’t kissed that first night, you’re also really just shit at hiding your laundry.”

Phil groans, even dares to give Dan a playful shove. Dan catches his hand midair and intertwines his slender fingers with Phil’s, levelling a serious look at his eyes. “Phil, you have to believe me. I’m not angry at you. Why are you so afraid of me reacting badly to this stuff? It’s _me_. I’m just Dan. It’s your best friend.”

“I know. I was wrong not to trust you. But he…”

When Phil doesn’t go on, Dan’s brows knit together in consternation. “He? Who’s ‘he’?” he prompts Phil.

Phil turns away so the shadows will hide how his chin quivers under the threat of his tears. He wants to pull away from Dan, yet at the same time the warm hand clasping his is the only thing grounding him in the icy night air and the voices of his imagination.

“He--he was angry when he found out.”

Dan wants to speak, to ask questions, but he doesn’t.

“He didn’t really find out, not exactly. Not like...how I thought it would go down tonight. He just noticed me dressing differently and asked me about it, more like confronted me, and I told him. I was still brave and idealistic back then and...pretty stupid. I still believed in things. I believed in him.”

Understanding begins to dawn on Dan’s face. The blue and white reflection of a neon street sign flickers unevenly against his cheekbone.

“Things were going shit for him back home and I always told him I would support him. He promised he’d do the same. Simple as that, I believed him. But I guess...my transition wasn’t something he’d reckoned he would have to witness, much less support.

“I mean, I don’t even know why he was so shocked in the first place,” Phil rambles on. “When we first met in high school, it wasn’t like I ever wore dresses or did anything particularly similar to other girls in my class. There was even that day I showed up at school with my hair chopped off in a bob.” Phil lets out a humorless chuckle. “They thought my mum did it to me because I’d got lice or something. I did it to myself, though. About as short as I dared to cut it. I don’t really remember anymore the exact trigger because I guess I’ve blocked out everything from that time in my mind, but...it was probably the girls making fun of my boobs and, I don’t know, I already didn’t _like_ them and I knew something was wrong with me for not liking boobs and hips but--I don’t know. Maybe it was the idea that even though the only thing I sort of liked about my chest was that it was pretty flat, that in itself could still be used against me by people who thought I was trying to fit in as a girl.

“He was the first to notice, though. That something was wrong, I mean. He found me crying on the bleachers...like some shitty high school movie and...yeah. He hugged me and made some awful dirty joke about liking small breasts, and honestly, I hate myself for it now, but at that point I started to really fall for him. I actually started to think that maybe what I needed wasn’t a transition, just some guy to understand me and accept me for who I was. Y’know, all weird and tall and gangly and flat-chested. With short hair.”

“That’s understandable,” Dan whispers. “You were in high school, after all. You were--what, fourteen? Fifteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Exactly.”

“I just--” Phil sighs again. “I totally should have seen it coming, you know? He made jokes about my next-door neighbors who were, like, _flamboyantly_ gay, I guess you could call them. I didn’t like it but I also told myself a lot that it’s not like I was like them. I really thought I could ‘grow out’ of this, whatever ‘this’ was, and end up marrying him and having kids and a good, stable life and…” Phil sucks in another breath to steady himself. “And I convinced myself I would’ve been happy with that, y’know? He liked the idea of me pursuing a dream job, anyway, so it’s not like I’d be some old-fashioned housewife in stockings and aprons. I’d have a career and I could be a slightly tomboyish sort of wife. It would all be okay.”

Dan seems to know where this monologue is headed. “So, when did you realize you were wrong?”

“When he actually proposed.”

Dan looks like he’s about to choke on thin air. His eyes scrunch up in a squint as he struggles to modulate his voice. “At...sixteen.”

“I was seventeen by then, but yeah.”

The strangled noise that leaves Dan at that point sounds somewhere between a curse and a wheeze.

“We were lying in bed when he said it,” Phil continues hurriedly, as if for fear that he’ll lose the nerve to finish the story if he pauses any longer. “He said something about his parents not approving of our relationship. Which, of course, I didn’t think jack of it, but it mattered to him, and he thought sealing the deal would sort of...fix things, I suppose. Or at least stop them from giving him hell about me. I mean, the way he brought it up was more convincing and made a lot more sense than how I’m telling you right now.”

“I guess.”

“The thing is, I understood where he was coming from. And he assured me that, like, I’d still be able to go to university and do whatever I wanted and we wouldn’t have to start anything together so soon, just rent a flat together, maybe, strike out on our own as soon as we graduated and be free from everybody. That sort of thing.”

Dan finds himself calming down a bit at this explanation. “Guess it didn’t sound so unreasonable.”

It’s Phil’s turn now to cast him a strange look, searching and profound, as he repeats slowly: “No, not so unreasonable. But...even though I’d been expecting him to say it, I mean, come up with the whole casual proposal thing, all of a sudden...I didn’t feel okay. I’d been kind of toying with the idea myself, remember? Like, imagining how I could be his partner and not have to worry about necessarily looking or acting…‘feminine’ or having to stay home…”

“Yup, yeah,” Dan nods.

“I said yes, though.”

“... _Oh_.”

“He wanted to make a whole affair out of it, too. He’d invited everybody we knew and set up a party. Picked out a dress for me and everything.” Phil’s breaths start to become uneven again, and he swipes at his eyes for want of something to hold onto. Dan scoops up his other hand and squeezes it once more.

“It’s okay,” Dan whispers. With his other hand he brushes the fringe from Phil’s eyes. “It’s okay. You don’t have to keep talking.”

“But I--I need to,” Phil hiccups. “You should know.”

Dan wants to argue, but somehow he makes out through Phil’s poorly-worded sentence his true sentiment, and he simply nods for Phil to continue.

“I went to the party,” Phil says. “But I didn’t wear that dress. I couldn’t. I started wearing my binder instead.

“He was way more furious than I thought he’d be. He looked like he wanted to explode right there and then in front of everyone. There were so many people, though, so he just grabbed me and pulled me into the shed. The party was on his family’s farm, so there was the shed and the backyard and everything. His parents were there, too.

“I don’t--I don’t really remember too much of the actual conversation. I ended up breaking up with him. That’s what I remember, probably because that’s the only thing that I said which I was proud of. I hate myself sometimes when I think of how I begged him to accept me before breaking up with him. I was...he--he had me on my knees crying at some point.”

The skin around Dan’s eyes tightens. He watches Phil grip the brick railing, suck in deep breaths, watches his shoulders shaking. He runs his hand down Phil’s back over and over, strokes his hair and the spot between his shoulder blades to soothe him. “That wasn’t the end of it, was it,” Dan says. It’s not a question; it’s a statement.

“Well.” Phil attempts a laugh that comes out terribly wrong. He wants to cry, or scream, or maybe punch something, maybe yell at himself or hurl himself over the wall. Just something. “You know how I said I was a virgin, right?” he says. “I lied.”

Dan doesn’t react at first. He doesn’t seem to know how to. His eyes snap up to meet Phil’s, a piercing brown boring into the swirling blue, yearning to know what it all means. There’s an invisible haze of gray between them, and Phil has the sudden and irrational urge to shout for the sun to come out, so that the crimson and vermillion can scatter the smoke between their gazes and Dan can finally just _understand_.

He should have given Dan more credit, really. Dan’s mind has already flown to the worst possible scenario. All he needs is a confirmation.

“Did you ever tell anybody?” is what Dan ends up asking.

Phil shakes his head mutely. He’s hoarse from the unshed tears. “You’re the first.”

The funny thing is, in all the times that Phil imagined this surreal moment when he would finally tell Dan Howell, his best friend, just exactly what happened to fuck him up so much, he always expected Dan to curse. Maybe even hit something or yell in rage--but always, he thought, there would be swearing. What he finds now in front of him instead is the furthest from what he pictured. Dan’s hand is still on Phil’s back, warm flesh touching through the thin layer of his t-shirt, only he’s frozen and stopped stroking up and down his spine. The warm chocolate brown of his eyes has ever so subtly clouded over, and against the obstinate flickering of that neon blue sign his visage has paled. The overwhelming sensation that hits Phil then is that Dan’s eyes are filled with understanding. Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place and all of a sudden everything just _makes sense_.

Dan doesn’t ask him if he’s okay. Phil feels grateful for that. After all, what kind of answer could he offer him?

“You need a jacket,” is the first thing Dan manages to rasp out after a long, long while.

Phil’s shivering, yes, everything’s freezing him to the bones. But something in the look in Dan’s eyes emboldens him just then, and instead of replying he steps closer with his arms half out and he murmurs: “Hold me.”

Dan does. Just like Phil has done for him so many times, Dan’s arms come up to envelop him, and in that moment Phil feels ever so much younger and smaller. He knots his hands around Dan’s torso underneath the flimsy material of his hoodie and the two of them stand like that in silence. The world seems to swirl a bit more when he closes his eyes and breathes in the lights and the rush of cars below.

“We can go back inside,” Phil mumbles into Dan’s shoulder.

“D’you need a cup of hot chocolate? I’m making you some hot chocolate. C’mon, you’ll catch something like this.”

~

Later, limbs tangled under a pile of blankets on the couch, Dan spoons Phil in his arms and runs his hand over and over through his hair. Phil feels sleepy and sated and a bit warm from the hot cocoa. He never wants Dan to stop.

“I’m so glad we can touch,” he whispers into the night.

Dan’s breath tickles the back of his neck. “Me too.” Phil can almost hear him gulp. “Look, about what happened at the fountain…”

“I understand. No need to explain.”

“No. I want to. You just opened up about the biggest thing in your life, so you deserve this much.”

“Okay.”

“I meant it, sort of, when I said...that I’m not gay. I mean--that’s not exactly what I meant to say. Y’know?”

Blinking into the darkness, Phil nods.

“My parents kicked me out two months ago. I knew it was coming, that’s why I already applied to Manchester. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.”

Phil shuts his eyes, breathes out a sigh. He’s suspected as much, to be honest. He tries to comfort Dan by saying, “At least you’ve got school going for you. Sounds shit, I know. But it’s something.”

“I s’pose.” Dan laughs quietly, humorlessly. “I dunno what I would’ve done if you didn’t live here in Manchester.”

“I mean, I would have let you stay with me, wherever I was, while you were waiting for school to start. I would’ve paid for your ticket, too. Lucky you got the dorms for when I get too...distracting for you.” Phil lets a tiny smile color his voice, but Dan doesn’t say anything. He stays silent, uncharacteristically so. Phil twists his head around to look up at Dan a little better. “Dan? What’s wrong?”

Dan’s arm around his waist tightens. He leans forward to bury his face in the crook of Phil’s neck, breathing him in. “I don’t really live in the dorms.”

“What?”

“Phil. Why else do you think I’ve been hanging out here almost every day?”

“...Because you like my raspberry-scented body wash?”

Dan groans. “As if I even have a _choice_ of body wash to begin with.”

“Dan!” Phil says abruptly, quite loudly. “Where the hell did you go then when you disappeared for those few days?”

“I was safe, don’t worry.”

“That’s not the point. You’ve been homeless this whole time” --Dan winces, but Phil keeps going-- “and I’ve been right here with a cozy little flat, not knowing that you _needed_ a fricking place. I wanted to call you so many times, you have no idea! If I’d known I’d’ve run over as soon as I could and dragged you back here.”

“The library’s perfectly safe and warm, too, thank you very much,” Dan retorts, having the nerve to sound almost offended.

“Dan.” Phil can’t help but feel his heart swell with fondness for this boy. “You are welcome here, all right? Any time. This is your home now.”

“I know.” 

The two lie there like that, breathing in and out in silence, for a long time. It must be nearly six in the morning when Dan speaks again, because they’re both facing the living room window and the streams of golden sunlight are just beginning to slip through the cracks in the blinds. Phil isn’t surprised when Dan addresses him, and neither is Dan. Sleep came intermittently to them throughout the night. Perhaps in part from the sheer rollercoaster of emotions they have gone through, perhaps because of the millions of thoughts that still roll around in their heads.

“Is that what you dream about?” says Dan. “When you’re screaming and I wake you.”

“Sometimes.”

A moment later, to Dan’s confusion, Phil starts fumbling around under the blankets for his phone. Wordlessly he scrolls through his gallery for a specific folder and then hands the phone to Dan.

“She’s so cute,” are the first words out of Dan’s mouth. “Who is she?”

“Her name’s Yazmin. I like to call her Yazzi for short.”

“Okay…”

“She’s who I dreamt about last night. That’s my daughter.”

~

Sleep becomes elusive for both Dan and Phil. Phil thought that coming clean about everything would somehow ease the tension of the night, but he was wrong. He suspects that these days, when the blinds are drawn and they lie tangled in the sheets spooning each other and listening to one another’s rapid, uneven breaths, the same thoughts run along an invisible cord between their minds. _Why. How. What if. Where do we go from here._

One night when Dan’s the big spoon and Phil finally manages to drift off into a shallow doze, he’s awakened by warm droplets rolling down the back of his neck. Phil does not move, at first. He doesn’t know if and how he should.

The tears continue to stain his shirt in hot puddles. Dan shifts a little so as to redirect the flow without waking the supposedly sleeping Phil. Phil stops him with a hand on Dan’s arm which is draped across his waist.

“Talk to me,” he whispers.

“You’re not supposed to be awake,” Dan mumbles.

Phil can’t think of anything to say except “It’s fine,” which he’s not so sure after all answers what Dan is silently asking.

“I shouldn’t be the one crying.”

“It’s not about who has the right to grieve.”

“Maybe. I guess.” Dan lets out an unsteady sigh that tickles Phil’s skin. “How old is she?”

“Four.” Phil is too surprised by the question to hesitate.

“And the last time you saw her?”

“Just a little less than four years ago.”

Dan’s ensuing silence forms enough of a question to prompt Phil to continue.

“I got to know her for a few months, at least, before I had to go to uni. My parents encouraged me to. They never considered that my life would just come to a halt because of...this. But…” Phil rubs at his brow, strokes Dan’s hand over his stomach with a thumb. “Sometimes when I’m alone with my thoughts I can’t help but tell myself how leaving for university was the worst mistake of my life, even with everything in my past considered. If only I’d been there, then he wouldn’t have--have had the chance to take her away…”

Dan waits for Phil to swallow down the sudden lump in his throat.

“My parents reported him straightaway as soon as it happened, of course. Not like it helped. I mean, in almost every sense of the matter, he’s right. How could I be a good mother to her? Much less a worthy parent?”

“Phil--”

“I know, Dan. I know it’s not true. Intellectually, I do. It’s not like I can convince the rest of myself to believe it, though.”

After a heartbeat of indecision, Dan apparently decides to let that matter rest for the moment. “Is that when the report turned into a legal case?” he asks instead.

“Yeah. I took a semester off to get it taken care of. Everything’s just been so slow, Dan, it’s been torture. I tried to see her more than once, even just from a distance playing in the yard or a little bit of her reflection in the window. The fourth time, I got caught and dragged away by the police.” When Dan swears under his breath, Phil says, “I was trespassing, Dan. I had it coming.”

“Phil Lester. You have to _stop_ this.”

“Stop what?”

“Blaming yourself for everything that ever happened to you. Look at me.” Phil obeys and rolls over to face him. “These things happened _to you_ , Phil. You didn’t make them happen. The fuck do you mean it was your fault for trying to see your own daughter when you’re so obviously the only worthy parent to take care of her? Her father’s a fucking _rapist_.”

Phil flinches. “It’s not…”

“It is, Phil. He is. You have to call things by what they are. There is no way you’re sharing the blame for what happened. Just because you weren’t born as a man does not mean he gets to dictate who you’re supposed to be and throw you around like a rag doll. You’re twice the man that he is just by virtue of the fact that you’re humble and introspective enough to take the blame. But _he_ doesn’t deserve that kindness from you, Phil. He’s manipulative and possessive and homophobic and he is complete and utter trash.”

Phil’s head is swimming at Dan’s words. All that runs through his mind now is _But what if I was so desperate to keep him that he thought I was leading him on?_

But Dan doesn’t need a translation to grasp the gist of the angst behind Phil’s eyes. “No,” he says firmly. “No. Don’t even think it. You did _nothing_ wrong. You were open to love just like any normal person, you fell for somebody’s charms, and you tried for the longest time to make your partner happy. But in the end you had to choose who you were gonna be. That’s the way it is, Phil. You stayed true to yourself, and you _have_ to stay true to yourself, always. Sometimes there are shitty consequences because the people around you are just so _fucked up_.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize, Phil. This is who you are.”

 _I don’t even know who that is_ , Phil thinks. He knows with one look at Dan’s face that the younger boy already knows what is going through his mind, but this time Dan does not respond. He simply sighs and strokes the side of Phil’s cheek with his fingers. Phil closes his eyes and sinks into his touch and leans forward to lose himself in the warmth of Dan’s bare chest.

Dan’s voice rumbles above his head a few minutes later. “When’s the court date?”

“In three days.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“But school--”

“You’re missing it too,” Dan points out. “Not like law even means jack to me anymore at this point. But that’s up for discussion another time, I think. Right now, this is the most important thing going on in your life, so it’s the most important thing in my life, too. I’m coming with you.”

~

Her eyes are like the sea on fire and they captivate Phil within the first two seconds of making eye contact.

Yazzi’s sitting in between Ray’s parents in the front row of the waiting room. Phil’s own parents are in the chairs across, staring straight at the little girl playing with her curls. Phil stands there practically rooted to the spot, hands frozen in the pockets of his slacks, sucking in every detail of her body, her face, her hands--her smile. She’s grown so much and her eyes are more piercing than ever. Phil dares hope he sees the resemblance between her now and his own childhood photos when his hair was still long and wild and red.

The thud of Dan’s body colliding with his from the back jolts him back to the present. Dan mutters an apology and gestures for him to enter the waiting room first. Phil rushes to make the necessary introductions between Dan and his parents--who are, unsurprisingly, as delighted to meet him as they could possibly be under the tension of the circumstances. Phil, however, can’t shake the feeling that multiple eyes are boring into him from behind. When he straightens and turns around, he finds he wasn’t wrong: Ray’s parents are watching him unabashedly, the slightest trace of a scowl on their faces and a burning behind their irises. 

Dan gently presses against the small of Phil’s back to get him to sit down. As he does so, he swoops down and grabs Phil’s hand, squeezing it, and flashes him one of the purest of dimpled smiles. Phil nearly begins to feel reassured when suddenly the cacophony of the buzzer makes him jump. The door to the inner offices opens up, and out strolls the pair of battered penny loafers that he thought he’d already erased from his memory.

Another squeeze of his hand from Dan steels Phil’s nerves. Despite another half a second of hesitation and the uncontrollable shaking of his insides, Phil raises his gaze to meet Ray’s. The eyes there are dark as ever, still green and stormy gray like the smoke of a burning forest. 

Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, and that truth makes everything inside Phil clench and scream in silence. And the smaller part of his mind, growing ever more powerful, whispers to him that despite it all, nothing _can_ change.

“Fiona,” Ray greets him. It’s not as much a greeting, really, as it is a statement. A challenge.

The muscle in Phil’s jaw twitches. Through the sudden onset of a haze like a cloud of cotton wrapping his head, he makes out Dan’s voice beside him speaking in a clipped tone. “It’s Phil, actually, in case you haven’t heard. Philip Michael Lester.”

Ray raises a brow, unimpressed. “And who the hell are you?”

Phil finds himself standing up then so fast that his vision swims for a minute. In the process he loses his grip on Dan, but it doesn’t matter, because he lays a hand anyway on Dan’s shoulder and squeezes it. “This is Dan. My boyfriend.”

From the corner of his eye he catches something akin to a smile twitching across his mother’s countenance, but he might have imagined it, because the next second she’s settled into a glare at Ray. At his side, Dan has started to shake ever so slightly, and only Phil can feel the fine tremors running through his body underneath his fingers and the material of Dan’s suit. And only Phil can understand why he quivers. Perhaps he was wrong, speaking of Dan like this so openly in this kind of space, but something tells him that Dan is reacting less to being outed than to the actual use of the word _boyfriend_.

A moment the two of them will have to talk about later.

Ray begins to shake his head with an ironic chuckle. “You two showing up here together? Just proves my point.”

“We’re not doing this again,” Phil says. “We’re done talking. You have to sit down and wait while I take my turn with the judge and you have to accept the outcome of today.”

Mrs. Lester makes a move to stand up, too, but Phil stops her with a gesture. Reluctant as she is, she shares a silent conversation with her son and her husband through exchanged glances and finally concedes, sinking back down again.

“Listen to you--‘we’re not doing this again.’ ‘We’re done talking.’ As _if_. You’ll never get over me, Fiona, and you know it.”

Something clicks just then inside Phil. What was shaking within is now still, eerily so. His eyes harden. His nerves are alight with fire. “Watch me.”

“Just because you wear boy’s clothes now doesn’t mean you’re a different person. You’re still the old, sniveling Fiona who doesn’t know what to do with her life. You’re selfish and immature and you left Yazmin behind to take care of yourself while _I_ had to change all my plans and take care of her.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it! I came back for Yazzi so many times. I’m fighting for her because I _love_ her. And you!” Phil whirls on his heel, unstoppable now, chest heaving and fists clenched at his sides. He fixes Ray’s parents with a glare. “I always knew you hated me, but this is low. Kidnapping Yazzi? Really?” It’s all Phil can do to restrain himself from leaping forward and scooping up the wide-eyed little girl in his arms.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ray scoffs. “God knows what you’ll do to Yazzi if the judge even considers handing her over to you. _You_ , a tranny, and your faggot _boyfriend_.”

Phil snaps. It is as if, without warning, he detaches from himself and he’s helpless to stop himself or anyone else in the scene that unfolds before him in slow motion. He sees his hands come up in claws, his eyes ignite, his entire body unfold and stretch forward in an arc of pure energy and rage. Close behind him, Dan springs up from the chair, yelling, his voice blocked out by the keening of the white noise in Phil’s ears. Phil’s parents are on their feet, but not fast enough. Yazzi flees behind the potted plant in the corner. The next thing Phil knows, there’s the burst of constellations of pain in his fists, fire coursing through the veins of his neck, flashes of crimson and green and gray across his field of vision.

They both topple to the floor at some point. The buzzer screeches overhead. Maybe Phil hears heavy footsteps running in their direction, maybe he doesn’t. Then he’s up on his feet again, swept up into the air and backed into a wall and something cold and burning blooms at the back of his head. The pain is so abstract that it hardly even registers in his mind in the first few seconds. Then hands are on his wrists and neck, pressing, choking, bruising, and everything is flooding back to him in shards of screams and tears.

Ray’s body on top of him. The smell, on his skin, on his clothes, in his hair, all over him. The rasp of the hay on the wooden table against his bare back as he squeezed his eyes shut. A pain inside him, so cold and deep he thought a little bit of him might die. Nails, fingers, hands everywhere.

The disembodiment is fractured just as Dan’s distant scream comes rushing back to full volume. “Phil! _Phil!_.”

The weight is pulled off him. A sickening crack as flesh connects with bone. Walkie talkies and officers crowding his vision.

As he sinks to the carpet, the last thing he manages to do is look up at the little girl crouching behind the potted plant, meet her gaze and offer up a distant smile, before he hurtles into the vortex of silence and black.

~

“I could have fought back.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But I could have. And I wanted to.”

“None of it was in your control. He wants you to think you were in control so you’ll believe you wanted it.”

“Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to pull me away? I almost fucking had him!”

“At least he got a pretty fucked up nose with my mean left hook.”

“That’s not--God, it’s not. Just.” The headlights from the other cars on the highway are starting to blur together and Phil finds himself gripping the steering wheel tighter than ever before. He knows how broken he sounds. “Dan, you don’t understand.”

Dan releases a quiet breath. It fogs up against the windshield for a fraction of a second. He turns his head sideways to look fully at Phil, who’s trembling all over with cracked knuckles and white lips and wet eyes.

“Wanna switch?”

Phil’s voice is a whisper. “Please.”

The car eventually rolls to a halt in the gravel at the roadside. He shuts off the ignition but simply sits there in the driver’s seat, training his eyes on the highbeams illuminating the trees in front of them.

Dan doesn’t make a move to switch seats, either. He raises his broken left hand in its cast as if in afterthought, but Phil needs no explanation.

“I understand, Phil,” says Dan.

Phil lets out a sigh from somewhere so deep within him that for a moment it seems it will never end. “Then why didn’t you let me be?”

“He was going to hurt you again. You were raging and you thought you had him but if I hadn’t done something he would have smashed your head on the extinguisher again and again. Can you...”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t have,” Dan says, for the sake of skirting an argument. “But I feel like you’re making me apologize for something I’m not even remotely sorry for. I hate him, Phil. You hate him too, I know that. But I _hate_ him, and I hate what he did to you, and I _hate_ thinking what he might have done to you again today. My rage just took over, okay? I didn’t want to see you get hurt because that would just absolutely tear me up inside, and you of all people don’t deserve it. You’re sunshine. Sometimes you don’t think so, but you are. Sometimes you’re just hiding behind a sunset or an eclipse. But you’re always there, and you’re always, _always_ so pure.”

The breath comes out heavy through Phil’s nose. He wants to cry, but not for sadness. Something has been triggered inside him, a well of bliss so fierce it’s like a heartache, and a nostalgia for this beautiful soul next to him he doesn’t even remember existed. It is as if he’s known Dan all along from a previous life and only now has the memory been unlocked--now, at this second, when it hits him in the most novel way possible that Dan _completes_ him.

“You are my stars.”

And for the first time that night, Phil turns to make full eye contact with Dan, and the sea of stars and fire that used move in a wicked dance across his dreams has come alive like angels. Because the blinding glow of the headlights from a passing truck has filled the window with a halo around Dan’s head, and his unkempt curls may be sticking up in all directions and there may be that ugly cut across his lip, but the most beautiful thing about him in this moment is the teardrop that rolls down the slope of his nose and glistens like fairy dew.

~

Maybe it’s a dream, or maybe it’s an alternate reality that Phil somehow entered when he fell down that deep, dark hole, but Yazzi finally, _finally_ makes it home.

She’s bubbly and clumsy and charming and every bit as weird as Phil could have ever hoped or imagined her to be. Whenever he and Dan bumble about in the kitchen attempting to make dinner--they’ve collectively made more of an effort ever since she arrived--she follows right at his heels, giggling and grabbing at his legs, squealing “Daddy! Daddy!” and Phil is still so amazed at how absolutely tiny this creature is and how she could ever have been the terror of his dreams. Her eyes waver between blue and green, yes, but now all Phil sees is the cerulean that Dan said is the hue of his own eyes.

Sometimes he falls asleep on the couch with Yazzi in his arms, the little girl trying to squirm out of his grasp, but he doesn’t let her because this could be the last time he gets to touch her and feel her and breathe her in before she’s taken away again.

Dan tells him constantly it won’t happen. The case has been settled, closed. Yazzi is his now. _Theirs_.

Phil takes to making home videos of her on his crappy camcorder. All too often he ends up dropping the camera to play with Yazzi, and Dan unfailingly has to scoop it up and continue the sequence from where it left off. Only a few weeks later he has the brilliant idea of taking over the camera and turning the homey scene into vlogs on YouTube.

Feeling eternally guilty, Phil insists he take it easy, because editing for hours on end must be exhausting. But not that it matters, anyway. Dan’s officially dropped out of university and needs something else to fall back on.

The joy of having her back is like the drug Phil never knew could be so intoxicating and terrifying. Sometimes he still jolts awake, tangled in the duvet with Yazzi between him and Dan, and he watches the two of them breathing quietly under the streams of moonlight as he struggles to bring himself back to calm. Sometimes in the nightmares she’s gone; sometimes both she and Dan are missing, and he is left wandering through a hellishly bright field calling out their names with no sound coming out of his throat. Other times it’s black and he sees only the silhouette of Ray holding the little girl’s hand, walking away from him, as that deep voice murmurs, over and over: _Just think what you’ll do to her. How can she be a woman around you?_

And that is how one morning, after shaking under the shower and fighting with all he has left inside him against the urge to scratch at his own skin, Phil finds himself quietly leaving the flat and walking the blocks and blocks of acrid wind toward the fountain in the middle of the university.

Maybe forty minutes have passed when he hears footsteps behind him, and he doesn’t have to turn around because that gait has been etched deep into his memory.

“Hey.” Phil’s voice should bear a tone of surprise, but somehow both of them know Dan knew all along where to find him. Phil’s gaze dips down to the sleeping child on Dan’s shoulder, and he can’t help but let a wistful smile flicker across his countenance.

Dan sits down on the edge of the fountain basin and with his free hand pats the spot next to him. Phil obliges, wading through the freezing water and plopping down on the stone surface with his feet still submerged so that he and Dan face each other from opposite angles.

“She looks a lot like you,” Dan comments. “Like I always knew what a ginger you were in your childhood photos but I think your hair got a little browner over time. Look at her, though. That’s a real redhead right there.”

“Her eyes, too,” Phil says.

Dan flashes a grin at him. “I’ve always thought your eyes were your best feature. A funny shade of blue-green. Whenever hers turn green, they resemble yours more than anybody else’s in the world.”

Phil tentatively reaches out to run his fingers through Yazzi’s curls. So soft and pretty. Dan’s own words from many, many nights ago, whispering _soft and pretty_ , echoes through his mind.

“You know what’s so fucked up about all this, Dan? I think he actually loved me. At some point, some of it was actually real.”

Dan chooses his words carefully. “Maybe it was, Phil. But he only loved you as Fiona. He only loved what he thought was a woman. Not you as a person, not your soul. How can any of that be real?”

“I don’t know anymore. But I do know I don’t love him. Maybe I never actually did. Because the moment he called you-- _that_ , that was the moment I knew I could have killed him.”

“Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Eh, I only got in a slap. You were the one that gave him a real punch.”

“You were the one that charged first,” Dan reminds him, suppressing a chuckle. “Teeth bared and all, like a real lion.”

Phil sniffs. “It was cathartic.”

“Speaking of...what’s got you like this today?”

Phil sighs. “He’s still in my head sometimes. What if...what if she turns out just like me?”

Dan’s tone hardens. “Like what, Phil? Like a beautiful person? A happy, generous, kind and the most loving soul I’ve ever met on the face of this earth?”

“That’s not what I--”

“I know that’s not what you meant. And so what if she does?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think…”

“...That you can accept her?”

Phil winces. “It sounds so cruel when you say it like that.”

“That’s because you’re being cruel to yourself,” Dan reminds him. “You have to learn something first, Phil. You are _you_ , no matter what you wear, no matter what your voice sounds like, no matter what other people say about you. Remember what you told me so long ago over Skype? That I had to stop caring about what other people think? That’s true for you, too. You will be able to accept Yazzi however and whoever she is because I swear, as long as I live, you will accept yourself.”

For the first time, as they stare at one another, Phil starts to crack into a smile. “That’s the kind of boyfriend pep talk I need to hear.”

“Boyfriend, huh? We haven’t even talked about that one yet.”

“Why do we need to talk when we could always, you know...snog?”

“Oh my God.” Dan’s voice is bubbly, exaggerated, almost pretending to sound offended. For the longest time ever they’re lost in a bout of giggles, in the process rousing a grouchy Yazzi from her nap.

With a light pink dusting his cheeks, Dan gives him a full-blown dimpled grin and leans forward to peck him on the cheek. “I love you.”

The pain of his happiness is too much for Phil to hold the tears in any longer. “I love you too.”

~

“I never asked you. Why the fountain?”

“You’re not the only one that needs to feel something.”

“You don’t need to. You are clean.”

“I know.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve known that for a long time. But what I haven’t known...is what it feels like to be _me_.”

“I’m your stars, aren’t I? So you’re my sun.”

“But that’s like night and day. The sun and the stars were never even meant to be together.”

“That’s not true,” says Dan. “The sun and the stars are exactly the same. It’s just that the sun is the most beautiful star of all. It demands that everybody look at it, because it deserves to be looked at.”

Phil knows it is true, and he knows he’ll believe the analogy one day. “But the stars at night will always guide us. That’s something the sun can’t do half as well.”

“Which is exactly why they need each other, isn’t it?”

With his right arm Phil pulls Dan in close to himself, and as Dan tucks himself under Phil’s chin, all he can think of is just how warm and familiar and safe Dan smells. And this time when Dan loops an arm around Phil’s middle, Phil doesn’t shudder. He doesn’t need to. He simply plants a kiss on top of Dan’s curls.

“You should probably know something,” Dan mutters into his chest, eyes half-closed. “I’m actually completely and utterly and...irreversibly gay.”

Phil offers a quiet chuckle, beaming gently into the glow of the nightlight.

“I know.”

Because that’s only ever the right answer for the two of them.

_Fin_


	2. Author's Endnotes

Thank you for reading _Your Freudian Slip_. 

This fic was a deeply personal project for me. When I first toyed with the concept about a year before its completion, I knew that I would have to address some very serious issues with special meaning to me: for example, anxiety, depression, gender identity, assault, and recovery. I also knew from an early date that the plot would enter into legal scenes and make some implications about how the justice system deals with, or doesn’t deal with, the issues like the ones I mentioned. As an American-born author with a largely American experience, of course, my own experience does not necessarily represent a universal vision of how these sorts of issues are being dealt with. But, all the same, I hope my highlighting these problems and experiences still sheds some light on what’s going on here and in other corners of the world.

Another point that I’d like to make is that it was purposeful on my part to write the story mostly from Phil’s perspective. A huge part of giving marginalized characters some agency is also making them the narrative voice. Even though Dan’s character in this particular plotline does suffer some prejudice and marginalization, too, I made the choice to focus on Phil’s past and Phil’s issues more, because they’re important. Not necessarily more important than the homophobia and crisis of sexuality that Dan undergoes, but just as important and probably far less addressed in public arenas.

To answer some other questions you may have, yes, Phil’s character does take hormones at the time that the story takes place. I originally wrote a scene including this fact but later deleted it because the dialogue seemed redundant and contrasted too much with the overall rhythm of the story. Also, Phil does win the custody case against Ray and Phil later considers pressing charges for assault and kidnapping. Those details remain open for a follow-up time stamp or a one-shot sequel. As for Dan, do his parents ever decide to initiate reconciliation with him? That’s up to your interpretation and imagination.

Once again, thank you for reading this fic and showing your support for _Your Freudian Slip_. Stay happy, stay healthy, and wherever you are, I hope you have a lovely day.


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